Juntas e medulas

by Walter Kempowski, Tito Lívio Cruz Romão (Translator)

Alemanha Ocidental, 1988. Pouco antes da queda do muro de Berlim, o jornalista Jonathan Fabrizius é convidado pela fábrica de automóveis Santubara para uma viagem-teste de seu novo motor de oito cilindros com destino a uma região da antiga Prússia Oriental, agora pertencente à Polônia. Foi ali que, nos estertores da Segunda Guerra, a mãe de Jonathan morreu logo após o nascimento do filho, e o pai, oficial nazista, foi morto em combate. Relato de volta às origens e road novel , Kempowski retrata uma Alemanha pré-unificação e revela, em tom cômico e por vezes sombrio, como os danos da guerra perduram muito depois do fim da tragédia. “ [ Juntas e medulas ] caminha em uma corda bamba entre o humor ácido e o horror… o passado sangra para o presente, sem ser solicitado e, em grande parte, sem ser comentado; no final, nem o sofrimento alemão nem a culpa alemã podem ser suprimidos.” – The Guardian

Genres: Fiction, German Literature, Germany, Novels, Poland, Historical Fiction, Travel

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

About the author

Walter Kempowski was a German writer. He was known for his series of novels called German Chronicle ("Deutsche Chronik") and the monumental Echolot ("Sonar"), a collage of autobiographical reports, letters and other documents by contemporary witnesses of the Second World War.

Reviews

[Adam Dalva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel, out in spring from NYRB, and would definitely read more Kempowski. It’s a slapstick sort of book, with brutality and heavy history lurking at the fringes. A foppish academic returns to Poland from Germany in 1988 and goes on a promotional road trip in an experimental car. The beginning, in Germany, is a pleasure, and the polish scenes, though uneven contain insight. Best of all are the memories of the leads parents, both lost in the war, both resurfacing briefly, painfully.

[Tony]

This novel is surely, even if only partially, autobiographical. The protagonist, West German journalist Jonathan Fabrizius, is described thusly:

He was forty-three years-old, of medium height, a man whose neatly parted blond hair was cut by a barber, not a stylist. The best thing about him was his eyes. Neither short-sighted nor long-sighted, unimpeded by astigmatism, he registered all that he encountered. True, his ear lobes were always a little grubby, and he had been known to throw up in a wastepaper basket on occasion, but his eyes were bright and clear, and anyone who had anything to do with him was struck by them. 'Whatever he may be,' such people said, 'he's somehow . . . I don't know.'

Jonathan has a girlfriend, Ulla, and she lives in the front part of his Hamburg apartment. She's the one who began their relationship but she has placed a sturdy bookshelf in front of the sliding doors that separate her side of the apartment from Jonathan's. When she's in the mood she whistles and Jonathan treks down the hall to her. Otherwise she listens to Mozart and does her work, finding pictures of atrocities, cruelties, for publication. It seemed more than a vocation, if you catch my symbolic drift.

Anyhow, Jonathan accepts an offer to travel to East Prussia, actually Poland, to write a kind of a travelogue for an upcoming car rally. East Prussia is where Jonathan hails from, where his father, a Wehrmacht officer, was killed. There too, his mother died in his own childbirth.

So, Jonathan goes. To a place that was once Polish, then German, then Polish, to say nothing of the Russians. His own existence is no less conflicted, problematic.

At times the story seemed a banal travelogue, yet there were moments of striking symbolism. Art, in particular is used. In his own apartment hangs a fat Botera child. The actual painting is not identified, but Botera rarely strayed:



Perhaps more telling than the description, supra.

There's also The Mealtime Prayer by von Uhde,



meant to place the protagonist in a setting with a random family on his journey. I liked, better, what was written about the visit, by one who sees the art even if he can not paint it:

His retina released the image it had absorbed that afternoon, of the three people in their little apartment, the flowery wallpaper, the bedding on the sofa and, of course, the knee.

He stops, too, at Hitler's bunker and takes a lump of the wall to bring back as a present for Ulla. He already got her a copy of Memling's The Last Judgement:



She liked that sort of thing. Though he rued that he couldn't find a coffee-table book about the Stutthof concentration camp atrocities. She would have really, really loved that.

Hopefully without spoiling the plotting more than I already have, enough happens in the journey that Jonathan is no longer the comfortable chubby Botera child . . . if he ever was.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

New words:

Axolotls: a neotenic salamander. Known as 'the walking fish' even though it is clearly not a fish.

Machicolation: an opening between the supporting corbels of a projecting parapet or the vault of a gate, through which stones or burning objects could be dropped on attackers.

Speleologists: Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their make-up, structure, physical properties, history, life forms, and the processes by which they form (speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology). If he had said spelunkers I would have got it. In this instance Jonathan looked on the bunkers of the head Nazis and wondered if speleologists might be lowered down to find some skeletons.

[Dax · Rating 3 out of 5]

This struck me as a very honest, very raw novel from Kempowski. Kempowski, who was forced to serve in the Hitler Youth organization during WWII, had to grapple with his Nazi involvement for his entire life. That struggle is the heart of the novel, where our fictional Jonathan Fabrizius travels to East Prussia and visits sites where his mother and Wehrmacht lieutenant father met their end. Fabrizius himself was born during the evacuation of what was then Germany territory in 1945, so his memories of that time are second hand. I recommend that readers first read 'All for Nothing', Kempowski's earlier novel that covers that evacuation and is an exceptional book. Kempowski lived through that trek as a young boy, and his experiences add a key element to that novel.

As for this novel, I can say that it is good. A solid three stars. Many will likely find it a little too slow for their tastes. I would call attention to a particular passage that highlighted the theme of the novel. Jonathan has just uncovered a locale of significant personal and emotional importance.

"Jonathan pounded the armrest with his fist and the words kept hammering in his brain: all for nothing! ALL FOR NOTHING! It's all for nothing, he thought, again and again. And: Who's to blame?"

After reading that passage, I wrote this in the margins of the page: The tragedies of the past, and the guilt associated with those tragedies, stay with us- as if they've settled in our marrow, in our bones.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had far more trouble with this story than I feel I should've. Overall, the characters were unpleasant, with the protagonist coming off as sad, if not pathetic. I could see it, I suppose, if this were intended as (over-the-top) parody, but I don't think so...

First half centers on Jonathan's life in Hamburg, with his "girlfriend"; he seems clueless that she's not that into (basically using) him. Their stress-free, Bohemian lifestyle caused me to wonder whether most Germans lead such lives, but being single with no kids could have something to do with that. This part I found a bit tedious while waiting for the trip to begin...

Since Jonathan's life for forty years has been grounded in events that took place in Prussia before and at the time of his birth, I did feel his desire to see the area, now in Poland, for himself. His impressions there were overall interesting. However, there was one scene that left me totally gobsmacked: Jonathan considers bringing back a "coffee table book" of a concentration camp as a gift for the girlfriend. Are there such items? I cannot imagine owning such a book. There are far more effective, tasteful, quieter ways of remembrance if that's what one wants I'd say. One German woman expressed boredom with the whole Holocaust thing (paraphrased) "There are always invaded, conquered people." I want to believe that there's something I'm not getting here, a cultural gap that can't be (easily) bridged?The Poles themselves are sometimes a nasty lot, but how much was it driven by hatred of Germans?

I'm going to leave it that it seemed a book by a German writer for Germans. Overall, I found it disturbing, though can't say I wish I hadn't read it since the writing quality is quite good.

[SueKich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haunting old haunts.

This novella tells of an impoverished Hamburg journalist who receives a juicy commission from a car manufacturer to cover the route of a car rally in East Prussia, now Poland. The story is set in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down.

It takes fully half the book before Jonathan Fabrizius embarks on the trip, one which his oddly distant girlfriend Ulla has refrained from joining; she is too busy organising a museum exhibition showcasing cruelty in art, the grislier the better. For Jonathan, this will be a journey into a past homeland he never knew: his mother died giving birth to him in a covered wagon while desperately trying to flee the Russian advance.

The German edition of Homeland was first published in 1992 and Walter Kempowski died in 2007. This is the first time the novel has been translated into English - and what a flawless translation it is. Kempowski’s nuanced, faintly stylised prose must have been a challenge for Charlotte Collins and she rises to it brilliantly: At the airport, “the automatic doors slid obsequiously aside…”, on the plane, “armrest hostilities were initiated immediately…”

The blurb for this book promises a man coming “face to face with his painful family history and devastating questions about ordinary Germans’ complicity in the war”. But for me it failed to deliver such resonance and I was left hoping that one day Charlotte Collins would give us a story of her own.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It might not sound funny, but I can very easily see Monty Python doing this book (well, not now but you know).

Kempowski's book is about memory and feeling but also about how people deal with the past.

It is a rather strange book. But there are lovely passages, some quite funny including the one about the teddy bear.

[Bhaskar Thakuria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Homecoming, and coming to terms with the infamous past of WWII are at the heart of this colourful road trip novel through the people's republic of Poland. The protagonist is a war orphan from East Prussia whose mother died during the evacuation while his father was killed by the Germans during the resistance efforts. He is a middle aged journalist who is commissioned by an automobile company to travel through the region in their newest model and, in the process, make a detailed note for a car rally they intended to organize in the future. Therefore this trip, which he carries out with two fellow Germans, came in more so as a pleasant surprise to him as he revisits the place of his parent's death. Besides this the novel is at once a representation of the animosity that exists between Poles and Germans and of the historical background of East Prussia during the war period. A nice, quick Sunday afternoon read that can be completed in a single sitting!

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few years ago I read Kempowski's final novel, All for Nothing. I thought it a remarkably good novel spun from a boy's observations of the end of WWII in East Prussia. Twelve year old Peter describes the war's last months as it flows past his house, generally east to west, the direction of refugees and German units in retreat. Peter's family is eventually forced to join those on the frozen highway where the events making up the novel's climax become details haunting Jonathan, the protagonist of Marrow and Bone.

The energy of Marrow and Bone flows the other way, west to east. Jonathan is a West German journalist offered an assignment to write a piece covering a car rally on that same highway, now part of Poland. He'll join fellow West Germans Hansi Strohtmeyer, the renowned race-car driver, and the overly-fastidious Anita Winkelvoss, who's loosely the organizer of the jaunt. Marrow and Bone becomes a road novel as the West Germans drive with a mixture of open-eyed wonder and open contempt through communist Poland. The setup invites humor and Kempowski provides it. But there's a compelling darkness in the journey, too. Jonathan isn't Peter of All for Nothing yet shares some of his biography and emotions about the highway. He remembers his family fleeing the Soviets in 1945 and can't help dredging up harrowing feelings of loss and regret as they travel the other way in 1983. In fact, on p161 of 1992's Marrow and Bone is the phrase "all for nothing" to be the title of the 2006 novel and seems to be Kempowski's verdict of the war. The mingling of humor and miserable family history with the supercilious observations the westerners make of the underprivileged yet opportunistic Poles creates many adventures, funny and poignant.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps too 'timely' and nation-state specific for me, as well as too symbolic (how does one deal with being a 20th century German? I have no idea, but it must be brutally difficult). I also had a strangely hard time getting the tone. I'm fairly sure Kempowksi was being serious when I thought he was being ironic, and vice versa. The conclusion I found simply baffling.

I'm happy to say this is mostly my fault, but I also suspect that people who usually write broadly speaking tragic books, but then write one that's a bit more slapsticky (this one is, as another reviews noted), don't usually nail it. It turns out it's hard to write Gulliver's Travels or even Portnoy's Complaint, and it's hard in a different way from the difficulty of writing, say, 'All for Nothing,' the other Kempowki on NYRB's list. That book got its title from this book; that book is far superior.

[Sara]

This book has been described as funny but somehow I had my doubts. Let me assure you that it is genuinely funny, odd, even a bit madcap. And it somehow manages all that and strike you to the bone with its sadness. Short, sweet, and surprisingly fun.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as I can tell, only two of Kempowski's novels have been translated from the German to English. This one and "All for Nothing", both published by the New York Review of Books. I read "All for Nothing" a few years ago and thought it was magnificent achievement. "Marrow and Bone" is a decent (and quick) read, but lacked some punch or driving force that made "All for Nothing" crackle. I also felt like this was an instance where my 'American-ness' got in the way of fully enjoying something that feels heavily draped in European sensibility. I'm guessing readers of East Prussian, Polish or German descent who are still connected to their roots may find something of more value. I do wish more of Kempowski's fiction would be translated into English because I'd continue to read him.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, this is the spiritual sequel to Kempowski's outstanding All or Nothing. In the latter novel, the focus is on the collapse and flight of the old German aristocracy in Eastern Prussia, in what is now Lithuanian and Poland, primarily. Marrow, while not a sequel per say, follows up the ethnic cleansing of the east German populations 40 years later when the mild-mannered journalist Jonathan Fabrizius gets hired by a luxury car firm to write a promo for motorists touring Poland. Jonathan was orphaned during said ethnic flight when his father, a Wehrmacht officer, was shot on the Vistula Spit, and his mother died en route west giving birth to him. Therefore, his family has deep roots and he has emotional ones to these former German lands.
The narrative is as hesitant as Jonathan and those seeking various and sundry motivations behind either the novel or what happens in it will leave unsatisfied. Kempowski is deliciously neutral, judges nothing, and is a master at a very succinct and humorous sort of prose that I actually find that I prefer to the more swoony, moony novels of, say, Grass. Jonathan's motoring journey with a professional racer and a wacky woman from the motoring firm is unpredictable and funny, all the while though underscored by the fact that Jonathan knows exactly where the church and graveyard are where his uncle, who took baby Jonathan west, brought his mother to bleed to death when he was born. Should he go or shouldn't? What is the point of memory? Is nostalgia not what it used to be?

[Tony Nielsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathon Fabrizius is a free lance writer based in Hamburg. Its 1988 and he is just getting buy thanks mostly to a stipend from his uncle. Even though its decades since he experienced the end of World War Two and the aftermath as a German child he still harbours grim memories of his parents, particularly his father, a Wermacht . The spectre of his mother's tragic death after giving birth in dire circumstances in East Prussia also haunts him.

Out of the blue he is offered an interesting assignment exploring a potential car rally route , even more so when it will take him across the very country where he was born and rescued by his uncle.

To add to the prospect of an adventure and taking in the place of his birth, and maybe the location at which his father was shot, his companions are rather bizarre. There's Frau Winklevoss who seems to choose the most unsuitable clothing as they hit the road day after day. The are driving a brand new Santubara luxury car with the man behind the wheel also a real character.

Their experiences in the impoverished highways and byways of East Prussia are always ones they will remember fondly. Especially when their car is stolen right in front of them. For the reader its a adventurous story. Perhaps because it was written in German in 1991 and its hard to know how the translation delivers Walter Kempowski's original manuscript which make it an unusual read. The three characters and their interactions, along with their on the road experiences was a book which delivered for me over a Christmas holiday.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

National memory, personal memory collide, intertwine: struggle for reconciliation. This feels like a soiled book— soiled or soiling. Its words are smudged: there is a film of dust that lies across its pages, an everpresent reminder of a past ceaseless creeping onto the present. A stuffy house with heavy drapes and carpeting can sometimes be a comforting place. This book is like that: a subtle mildew that can be both unpleasant and familiar. Though we might prefer the lobby of MOMA, we are drawn, inevitably, to the old bookseller’s shop in the basement on ninety-fifth: to grandmother’s house. I have said before though not explicitly that the project of outlining a plot is a foolish one: Literature, as life, is made less on action than on experience. With language we point our intentions. Mine is to see, to guide, and to share. This novel is suffused with the feeling of time, and, equating time with decay, the characters march through decay as through time, specks of dust floating about their heads in the air.

And all that about reconciling collective tragedy and personal memory— history, the past: cages from which not the best of us do escape.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every now and then, I see pictures that blend old and new images of a place to show how much has changed and how much as stayed the same. A lot of them show scenes from World War II alongside rebuilt walls and buildings. The protagonist of Marrow and Bone, by Walter Kempowski and pitch-perfectly translated by Charlotte Collins, Jonathan Fabrizius, has the same kind of vision. His interest in medieval history and his own family history from the end of World War II is always at the front of his brain. Fabrizius isn’t particularly bothered by his past vision, but he does wonder what it means that history is only lightly buried below the mundane, contemporary surface, waiting for someone to scratch...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.

[Dree · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's 1988, and the freelance journalist Jonathan Fabrizius gets a job that involves traveling through East Prussia (now Poland) for a luxury car manufacturer and then writing a piece promoting the upcoming car rally and things to do along the route ("state of the art V8 engines against a backdrop of dilapidated towns). He goes. Jonathan was born in East Prussia--he was born as the Germans fled west in advance of the Russian army. His father was killed in the war, his mother died at his birth and was left at a church by his uncle, who raised Jonathan and bankrolls his freelance existence.

There is a lot of sardonic humor here, as the trio (driver, journalist, organizer) drive their fancy car--it, as well as their West German-ness, makes them targets for both police looking for bribes and small-time cons. They try to find certain German sausages and can't. In looking for "interesting things to do", they go to the usual places, and are following a busload of elderly Germans on a heritage tour (a tour Jonathan's parents might have been on, had they survived). The restaurant critic cancels. Scandinavian tourists are in Gdansk "to get tanked on the cheap". Of the three, only Jonathan manages to meet regular Poles, largely accidentally, but he goes with it each time.

Each bit of this humor is part of Kempowki's addressing serious topics. The haves (from the West) vs the have-nots in communist Poland. Memory, history, and family. The question of whether Germans of the 1980s should be punished or forgiven for the sins of their fathers (or, in the case of the heritage tour, themselves). The behavior of those on the heritage tour. What is considered "interesting" and "worthwhile" for tourists.

At under 200 pages, this small book packs a punch.

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quirky yet moving book. As other reviewers have commented, there’s a somewhat slapstick, comic, absurdist approach being taken but it’s actually quite a useful lens through which the author - and, not coincidentally, the main protagonist - explores subjects that are deeply painful and traumatic for him and his nation. As if 1945 is just so painful it cannot be looked at directly, but only sideways. I loved it. It didn’t keep me on edge all the way through but instead left me with something that I can only describe as an ache inside me, one I am still working to pin down exactly. If you’ve ever lost someone or something really important in your life, this will resonate in a slow and profound way.

[Sabine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man bekommt große Lust auf Krakauer Wurst, aber irgendwie konnten Herr Kempowski und ich nicht wirklich zueinander finden.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.7 - glad he wasn’t a nazi

[AD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky account of a West German visiting Poland, ostensibly on a writing mission, but actually looking to find out where his parents were as they drew their last breaths at the end of the Second World War. And what will his girlfriend do while he's away?

[Paul Janiszewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Water Kempowski - Homeland
Ambivalence. Something is not quite right, although there is nothing wrong. Even before I had turned the last page this feeling, this impression, this presence had become dogged, and that was not just as a result of the story, but more so as a result of the story's execution. Perhaps the meaning lies in this equivocation. Nonetheless I sought meaning.
The attachments in the way of the belonging of family, friend and nation coalesce in the form of identity, and thereby seemingly work for the better good, in the manner of cohesion and understanding; yet here lurks the paradox. What is good wholesome warm and righteous, has an underling, an alter ego so to speak. Its forces are diametrically opposed, sprouting in division, alienation and confusion. Such is the duplicity in the guilt of this belonging.
The story makes entry in Hamburg, Germany, 1988, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, whereby a hapless writer Jonathan Fabrizius contemplates a commissioned trip to cover a story planning a motor rally on the "other side"; to an area shrouded in the mystery of his tragic origin of birth. Never had he revisited this place in history, now communist Poland (Gdansk), originally Poland, then Prussian (German), then in ambiguity a "Free City", only to be reclaimed as German (Danzig), and yet again reclaimed and reborn Poland, but this time to a new master in disguise. An area of disputed homeland for many, of mixed identity, where a world war began, and drew to a close on the heels of a desperate flight to an absolution of sorts, or at the very least, an escape to the respite of a life in the shadow of uncertainty.
Who am I? Where do I belong?. Jonathan came into the world amidst the whirlwind of a flight. Born in transit on the road to a freedom unknown, to a mother succumbed to the call of mortality, on the steps of a church in passage, and a father estranged to the call of a war, left behind to defend what might have been home. A place where the Vistula river met the sea, a port city of the ages where one may not easily know friend or foe. Never the less, grounds for a belonging, but with a soul amiss.
Jonathan's troublesome story is not just one of attachments in the way of provenance, but has as much relevance in the attachments of the present that conspire and construe the nature of ones identity, and in doing so, form a sense of being. The belonging of dear Ulla Bakke De Vaera is of its own malaise, in the mix of friend, family, home and homeland. For these are the things that seek to make a being whole. Ulla is Jonathan's girlfriend strangely living in the room partitioned as next door.
The dynamic of the duality of these present and past belongings create the conflict, and as one might become aware, are ongoing, forever in flux, and may never reach a satisfactory conclusion. Herein lies the way in which the paradox of belonging exists. What presents as good may also be bad and visa versa. "I am part of that power which would do evil consistently, and constantly does good" Is it Kempowski or the character Jonathan that breaks to this tangent of a thought quoted from Goethe's Faust. Jonathan at least explains "evil exists in order to awaken good"
Jonathan departs on his commission to write and explore, in a land alien but familiar. He finds himself in trust and distrust of himself and the locale of how one might be. "When you started a war, murdered Jews.. the cards were stacked against you.. why had he let himself in for this". Again is it Kempowski or Jonathan that breaks with "Who is to blame, of what misdeeds are we accused?" The varied complexity of the dilemma is not just Jonathan's as he duly notes the admission of a local, "A porter who - as he put it - didnt really know whether he was a German or a Pole", and further confirms in enigma "he was stopped by an elderly woman. She looked German, but she definitely wasn't from Germany". Jonathan befriended this Pole but a German, a Kuschinski, who in reciprocal familiarity proposed a homely invitation for need of assistance. In the midst of this family at home Jonathan considered: "I'm just going to sit here for a while. He felt as if he belonged". Later he recounted the visit: "His retina released the image it had absorbed that afternoon, of the three people in their little apartment, the flowery wallpaper, the bedding on the sofa.. It showed that the picture was still intact: it could consolidate itself into something symbolic and stand the test of time". The "picture" was that of his own apartment, a familiarity of sorts - an "image" to be "consolidated" and to "stand the test of time". The realization of a belonging, of a homeland, of an identity, manifests itself in an emotion, a notion, a feeling and a way of being. It conjures a timeless image of a space in the mind's eye that is felt rather than seen. When one looks at a physical image, it is not the image itself one may "see" but rather the the emotion it evokes, and hence it is of little relevance whether one or the other is material or imagined as they both are in effect each other. Peter Blickle in his study "Heimat: A Critical Theory Of The German Idea Of Homeland attests to this understanding: "Heimat is based in a spatial concept of identity. Heimat constructs are counterphobic conceptualizations expressed in regressive, imaginistic terms; they are wish fulfillments without a price." The Botegna painting in Jonathan's apartment at home, of a plump mother and child is again, a coveted image of familial notion, a dreamy image, a token of his lost belonging, a symbol of himself in the bosom of his belonging.
Throughout Jonathan's journey in space and in time, the paradox of his belonging, fades in and out. The digressions in story to reference of prose of text, or words of song, or dreamy conceptions of past actual events, consolidate his ambivalence in attempting to make sense of the coalescence of good and bad.""Never my God to thee" It was eighteen degrees below zero, people jumped into the water and were crushed by ice floes. Severed legs severed heads. And for this heroic deed the soviet submarine commander received a medal..". A reference to the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustav, in January 1945, and the desperate flight in the area of the Baltic on sea and land, that spawned his arrival as a being of inseparable troubled belongings. In these references to the past of Jonathan's retracing of steps, Kempowski illuminates a temporal continuity or fusion. Jonathan is an identity not just of his individual self but of those who had preceded him in place and in time. He bears their signature. He bears their guilt. He bears their suffering. It is his injustice of being. It is his guilt of belonging. "I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine".
From the sea terror on the Baltic coast, his fathers death on the Vistula spit, his mothers last breath on the steps of the church, their plight is a journey in flight from impending disaster, impending evil, to a hope in good faith, a perceived salvation, a salvation however that may never be forthcoming. Jonathan pictures his father on the spit with hope in his heart but fear in his gaze. "He saw him standing on the shore of the Vistula Spit, scanning the sea with his binoculars - "When are they going to come and get us?"- while behind him the refugee wagons rumbled from east to west and west to east. Jonathan pounded the armrest with his fist and the words kept hammering in his brain: all for nothing! ALL FOR NOTHING! He didn't mean the death of his mother or his father.." Indeed. Instead it is the tragedy of a journey of the spirits of unresolved identities laden with guilt seeking their salvation, of the souls of a belonging besmirched by war, in flight from a disaster to a promise of the return to a safety only ever realized within the state of untainted integrity and sanctity of the bosom from whence they first came, of anticipation to a salvation of sorts, in life and therefore in death, in being and in spirit. A journey and a fate, without resolution. Jonathan understands the hopelessness of the legacy he inherits.
The dichotomy of Jonathan's belonging is that it had usurped itself. In the past and in the present. All that was good had become bad. When Jonathan had returned home from his trip Ulla had absconded with her employer. Would there be a resolution? "Strange that the Botegna had been taken off the wall. The painting stood on the floor: the nail had been ripped out, the hole filled in. What was that supposed to mean?"

[Sabaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

end of chapter 18 won me over,

[Gerald McFarland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Put this brief (188 pp) novel in the serious literature category. The protagonist, a journalist named Jonathan Fabrizius, is a resident of West Germany in 1988 (just before the collapse of the Soviet empire). He accepts an assignment to travel to the part of communist Poland that was called East Prussia at the time he was born there in 1945. He, his uncle, and his pregnant mother were fleeing the approach of the Soviet army when his mother dies giving birth to Jonathan. The book jacket quite accurately describes his travels as "a darkly comic road trip, a queasy misadventure of West German tourists" exploring the world behind the Iron Curtain, so near his home in Hamburg, but so alien to prosperous Germans like Jonathan. The most touching moments arise when he locates the small town and church where his uncle left the body of Jonathan's mother behind and the beach where his father, a German officer, was killed by enemy fire.

[Ernie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This satire of German and Polish attitudes to reconciliation after world War II gave me some laughter as well as thoughts about whether lasting reconciliation can be achieved in less than two generations. Jonathon, aged 43 in 1988, lives in Hamburg with his girlfriend Ulla who shares his old two roomed flat and who whistled from behind the partition when she decides that she would like him to visit for sex. She works in a museum and is preparing an exhibition on cruelty with her boss and making decisions about which grotesque examples in great art works would look best on the walls. Jonathon seeks to impress her by finding a suitably cruel print for her room and enters discussions with an antique dealer and a Turkish restauranteur whom he notes has photos of Turks suffering but none of the Armenian massacre and expulsion. Further talk with a newsagent and his 80 year old landlady who is a Nazi general’s widow add to the satire.

Jonathon was born during the war in a village in the formerly German area of Poland, East Prussia where his mother died in childbirth and near where his father also died in the Nazi army’s disastrous retreat from Russia. He accepts a commission to visit this area with a public relations team promoting a newly produced sports car saloon in order to write an account for a magazine. On the trip to Poland, he is accompanied by Hansi, a famous car rally driver whom he mistakes for their chauffeur and Mrs Winkelvoss who is a Dr Pangloss character who finds everything about the Poles and Poland charming. The food writer also commissioned for the trip, understandably never arrives.

What follows is a road trip in the all too glamorous and expensive car, which is inevitably keyed along its entire length in the first night and a succession of encounters with the ‘charmingly disorganised Poles’. Kempowski, the writer adds further satire by comparing this West German group with a bus load of East Germans from The Homeland Association who sing inappropriate nationalist songs which Mrs Winkelvoss thinks that the Poles cannot understand. The humour is sharpened by the visits to places of war carnage from Danzig to the Vistula Spit, the Nazi homeland signified by the fortress of the Teutonic Knights at Marienberg and Hitler’s bunker where he escaped assassination. A planned visit to a concentration camp is almost avoided. ‘Who is to blame?’ Is a frequent question. The exhibition of cruelty is seen indelibly inscribed into the landscape and the culture of the post war Germans.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Germany’s great traumas is the westward flight of the civilian population of East Prussia in the winter of 1945. Thousands upon thousands of people died on the road or on the Baltic Sea as they fled the advancing Soviet army.

The protagonist of Marrow and Bone was birthed by this trauma. His mother died on the road while giving birth to him. His father was blown into physical nonexistence. The uncle who conducted his mother on the way was able to save the baby and raise him. As an adult who has not grown up, the protagonist shares an apartment in Hamburg with an unaffectionate and demanding girlfriend. It is 1988, and he is contracted to travel in the former East Prussia in a small party of three who are plotting the route for a promotional car rally for a Japanese brand. His job is to write about the interesting places the rally will go through. All of these places are somber as if the past had put a ghostly stamp on the map. As fate would have it, he ends up in a Polish village where his mother died. He ends up on the spit at the mouth of the Vistula where his father was blown up. He ends up at the remains of the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s eastern HQ) now complete with a parking lot for tourists. Their journey seems shadowed by a coach full of seniors (Kempowsky’s generation) on a “Homeland Tour.” Are they doing consciously what our hero is doing unconsciously? Are they his parents’ spirits? And so forth.

In some indistinct way, the journey changes him. Perhaps being in the places where his parents died has connected him to the present. When he returns to Hamburg, his girlfriend has moved out (good riddance, say I), and he begins to make a life for himself which he determines in just a couple of small ways. The End.

This is a lovely book. And I have to say Mr. K. is often immensely funny. The thoughts and inner narration of the protagonist while at a piano recital by an artist known to have a heart defect are simply laugh-out-loud.

[Pascale · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me laugh, cry and shiver at every page. Jonathan Fabrizius is an independent scholar living in Hamburg with financial help from the uncle who saved his life when his mother died giving birth to him in East Prussia in 1945. The year is 1988 and nobody is yet aware that the Berlin Wall is about to fall. Jonathan has a girlfriend, Ulla Bakkre de Vaera, who comes from a distinguished but impoverished family and aspires to a promotion at the museum where she got a job almost on sufferance. Her ambition is to make her name with an exhibition devoted to the depiction of cruelty in the visual arts. When he is offered a well-paid gig precisely in the area where his parents died just before the invasion of the Red Army, Jonathan can't afford to turn down the money. He flies to what is now Poland with 2 other people who have been hired to map out the route for an upcoming car rally, Anita Winkelvoss and the racing legend Hansi Strohtmeyer. Their misadventures on the other side of the Iron Curtain form the bulk of the narrative. Their prototype is stolen from them, and almost by accident Jonathan finds the church where his mother was buried. They bump into other West Germans who are touring the region because they cannot accept that East Prussia no longer belongs to Germany. And that's the underlying theme of the book: that this part of the world which has been under so many different flags over the course of history is haunted by the ghosts of all the civilians who were butchered as armies kept invading and being repulsed. The leitmotiv of the book is "who is to blame?", a question first asked by a sick young woman Jonathan meets by chance in Gdansk. Kempowski makes a bleak comedy out of the contrast between what cruelty means to the upwardly mobile Ulla and what it actually translates into for men, women and children in times of war. This is a haunting and essential book.

[Mary Warnement · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seeing this described as a comedic novel made me wonder if I would get the humor. Dark comedy, I should say. I think I could tell where Germans would laugh. Or shake their head in amusement. My feelings were more bemusement, though the madcap road trip had its funny moments. But perhaps outweighed by the overall sense summed up in the final sentence, "what was that supposed to mean?" I saw recurring themes from other works by Kempowski: the topic of the refugees from East Prussia in 1945, "all for nothing, (161)" echo (183 on beach where father died).

13 Isestrasse. Strange, there are three buildings blurred on Google maps. Now this street faces an elevated road or rail.
Isebek canal
Dr Gotze bookshop still exists and still seems to specialize in maps
Jonathan (Joe) Fabrizius
Ulla Bakte de Vera (aristocratic)
Albert Shinderloe
Hamsi Strohtmeyer race car driver who would love to drive tour bus
Frau Winckelvoss who adopted a baby from South America and wears harem pants, ridiculously high heels, and many necklaces

His mother breathed her last while a refugee with her brother who left her in a church after she died in childbirth. His father died on the Vistula Spit. He was raised by his uncle Edwin whose furniture business allows him to remain in university and freelance writer at age 43. His parents' deaths are stories, cocktail party talk, until he travels to Masuria in Poland to write a travelogue for rally car drivers and sees where both breathed their last.

41 "you can't yearn for what you have"

Paintings: Botero fat child in his apartment
Memling Last Judgment in the Marienkirche (one of Jonathan's northern goddesses, his pet project studying large brick Gothic churches)

143 The cruelest act in the book by Jonathan is sinking the boat with Frau Winckelvoss.
170 In the fortress, Hansi says "anyone who barricades himself in is already lost"

[Gerald Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read Kempowski's Homeland because I was so blown away by his more recent novel, All For Nothing. I was not disappointed - but Homeland it a subtly -- or significantly -- different book. Both novels deal with a similar theme of coming to terms with the end of WW II - and the fall of East Prussia, in particular. But whereas All For Nothing is more historical fiction with a narrative of the events constructed through the eyes of the young protagonist, Homeland is very much set in the contemporary world and is more about historical memory and the conflicts that arise with Germans coming to grips with their recent past. Jonathan was born while his mother died on the terrible exodus out of East Prussia. His father, a German soldier, had been killed sometime earlier. Nevertheless, he was a beneficiary of Germany's post-war miracle with an uncle who became wealthy enough to support Jonathan throughout his 40+ years.

That's all I'll say about the plot right now. But I will say that once again I marvel at Kempowski's ability to craft a novel that satisfies on so many different levels -- the narrative, character development, style. The narrator's relationship with and attitude towards all the characters is particularly interesting and hard to pin down, for sometimes we are clearly in the mind of Jonathan (and sometimes others) but at others we seem to have the narrator commenting on or mentioning some of the absurdities in which the characters are engaged. In this way, Kempowski seems to be capturing something about how contemporary German society or people -- and he's not exactly supportive how how things have turned out.

[Richard Hoare · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel I should have been more moved by this novel. It's set against the background of hundreds of thousands of German refugees fleeing the Russian advance at the end of the Second World War in what is now Poland. However, I felt curiously distanced both from that historical exodus and the effect it has had on the lives of the characters in the late 80s when the novel is set. Irony and distance are no doubt effects sought by Kempowski and perhaps the means by which the central character has coped with and processed the horrific events, their effect on his life and their echoes in the Poland and Germany of the 80s. This is certainly where the novel is at its strongest and most interesting. However, the relationship between the travelling companions in particular never came to life for me (although I may not have understood some of the author's satirical intentions here) and I just didn't really care enough about any of the characters.

[Darius Ostrowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not really sure why I liked this book, but I did. It wasn't laugh-out-loud funny, but it was funny. It wasn't a great travel book, but it was full of interesting observations about Germany and Poland at a critical time in history. It wasn't too focused on the aftermath of WW II, but the results of that war colored every single page of the story.

So what is it about? A German journalist, Jonathan Fabrizius, is tired of his life going nowhere in West Germany, and decides to take up a job offer from a car company writing about a proposed road rally across Poland. Jonathan is an orphan born in former East Prussia, now a part of Poland, so this is a (somewhat reluctant) trip back to the land of his birth.

Mr. Kempowski does an excellent job capturing a very specific time and place, and uses his cast of characters to highlight the differences between east and west, past and present, guilt and acceptance.